Friday, April 13, 2007

All Crosby, All the Time Saturday on NBC

Eventually, the NHL might want to try replacing playoff games with Sidney Crosby skating around by himself.

Saturday afternoon, the Pittsburgh Penguins star will be on NBC — which will have a "Crosby-cam" on him full time. The move has the Canadian Broadcasting Company seeing red. It pays the NHL $65 million a year in TV rights fees and wanted Pittsburgh-Ottawa on its prime-time Hockey Night in Canada. Instead, it got Tampa Bay-New Jersey so NBC, which pays no rights fee, would get hockey's big star.

The rationale: Canadians already like hockey, while the league needs any help it can get with its microscopic U.S. TV ratings, which are slightly less tiny when Crosby appears. NBC averages 1.1% of U.S. households for games with Crosby and 0.8% without him. Versus attracted 0.19% of U.S. cable TV households with Crosby on, compared to its 0.13% overall NHL average.

NBC producer Sam Flood says the pregame show will cover "the Crosby mania" in Canada. Canadians who can't get NBC will at least get Crosby snippets online: NBC will take Crosby-cam shots from the game's third period and let its studio analysts analyze that footage on nbcsports.com.